MovieChat Forums > The Queen of Spades (1949) Discussion > Awful accents

Awful accents

posted 14 years ago by Unicorn_Blade
2 replies | jump to latest

In most old films, specially the ones set in a historical period, actors used quite a weird mannerism. In Queen of Spades however the accents were quite irritating... I never got why Countess Ranevskaya as a young woman spoke normally, and as an old woman suddenly spoke with a heavy, 'russian accent', or why Suvorin hissed out most of his lines rather than just speak? It sounded quite ridiculous at times... Apart from that the ambience was great, I would have enjoyed the film so much more if more efforst was put into acting :/

[–] Jamal-Nazreddin 9 years ago

^

I agree and disagree.

I agree that it can be irritatingly monotonous if an actor uses the same voice (Rod Steiger is the most annoying for his hissing voice).

The director and editor should have been controlling this habit but Thorold Dickinson was obviously too busy with the super elaborate lighting and the mise-en-scène.

I disagree about accents. I've noticed two instances when the elderly sink into dementia and reclaim accents from their youth.

[–] vicky_lc2001-1 9 years ago

That's true. I'm a Filipina and my grandmother grew up with Spanish and Waray (a local Filipino language different from the national one we use Tagalog aka Filipino) as her first languages. Layer she learned and spoke mostly in Tagalog and English. But as she got older, she eventually forgot to speak both Tagalog and English and therefore could not converse with her grandchildren and other Filipinos since most don't speak either Waray or Spanish. Keep in mind, she spoke both Tagalog and English for. 50 years yet had forgotten all of it in her last years.